No scuba diving on my lawn! A hike at Andrew’s Point in Rockport, MA

Recently learned about this public hiking and shoreline access in Rockport, MA, from this Boston Globe article about the pending litigation between a landowner and the Town of Rockport. Basically one lady is trying to shutdown access to the Atlantic Way, a public hiking and swimming spot in front of her house that has been used by locals for hundreds of years.

The deeds to each of the houses in this neighborhood specify that there are public rights of way between each house and in front of each house on the rocks for public use. We can debate the merits of government conservation land, however as a staunch believer in private property rights, I dearly hope that one rich person isn’t able to steal public land from the town via the courts. This really should be a cut-and-dry case in favor of the town, but money can have its way of bribing the courts.

No scuba diving allowed on her lawn!

I’ve seen a lot of crazy signs, but “No scuba diving [on my lawn]” is a new low for NIMBYism. I’ll tread lightly, but I suspect there is something severely unwell with this lady on Andrew’s Point.

The Atlantic Way is a real local’s gem in Rockpoint and I recommend checking it out if you are ever near Cape Ann.

A week of sailing in the British Virgin Islands

Day 1: Arrival

Island time is no joke. Everything moves at a much s l o w e r pace in the Caribbean and the Virgin Islands are no exception. On vacation, this unhurried mindset can be a welcomed change from the rapid tempo of the Northeast. In January, I had the pleasure of sailing in the pristine blue waters of the British Virgin Islands with a group of friends on a 46-foot catamaran.

My eyes crept open in the Ted Williams tunnel on the 4am Uber ride to Logan Airport. The journey began with a short flight from Boston to JFK. That layover was quicker than a New York minute. Good thing I didn’t check a bag. A troupe of Moko Jumbies—Caribbean stilt dancers—flailing to loud music greeted us at the arrival gate at the St Thomas airport in the US Virgin Islands. What alternative universe had I drifted into?

I met some of the other members of my group at the airport and we found a Taxi van to take us to the ferry terminal for the Road Town Fast Ferry. Keep in mind that is very much a misnomer and that there is nothing fast about island time.

At ferry terminal, I began the mandatory $20 bag check. The gentleman handling the bags approached me and I tried to confirm that my bag was headed for Tortola (which is in the British Virgin Islands), to which I got the response, “No, man, BVI.” I said again, “Tortola?”. He said, “No, BVI”. I gave up when I noticed my friends’ bags were being thrown on the same pile.

The arrival in Road Town, Tortola, BVI, was equally a theater of organized chaos. We waited on the boat for nearly an hour, while the attendants unloaded the bags onto the dock. When we finally disembarked, we waited in the customs queue for at least 20 minutes. We had a brief struggle with the customs officer lady when we told her the marina name instead of the boat charter company we were using. The final queue was for the environmental tax, which you pay in cash to the last jackass by the exit door. (A similar fee is also assessed when leaving the BVIs, so bring plenty of cash). Fortunately they use US currency.

You may sense my frustration at this point. Truthfully, I’m trying to restrain myself as I type this from writing a scathing review of the organizational skills in the Caribbean because the rest of the trip I’m about to describe was quite lovely.

My friend, who would be our skipper for the week and who had arrived a day earlier, picked us up in a rental car. Interestingly, the cars in the Virgin Islands are nearly all standard American left-hand-drive vehicles, despite driving on the left side of the road. The road to Nanny Cay Marina hugged the mountainous coastline and within 15 island minutes we arrived at the boat. The vacation finally begun. I could breathe now.

Day 2: Indian Head & Norman Island

We set sail in the morning and the first stop was Indian Head, a large rock surround by a reef, where we went snorkeling for the first of many times. In the afternoon, we made our way to Norman Island, which had a grotto that we also snorkeled thru. There were countless varieties of fish—even an octopus—that we could see in the crystal clear Caribbean blue water.

Each large boat, including our own, had a small dingy attached to the back. Nearly all of the dingies were small inflatable zodiacs with a little outboard engine, which were useful for going ashore when the catamaran was anchored or moored offshore. And I strongly qualified that previous statement with “nearly” since some of the mega-yachts we encountered later in the trip had dingies that practically looked the length of our large catamaran.

When my friend first had me drive the dingy that day I asked how far I had to be away from people and boats before I could go fast, to which he replied, “There is no rule, just try not to run over the people snorkeling.” In New Hampshire, where I grew up, there is a strictly-enforced law that you must be 150 feet from any swimmer, boat, or shoreline before going faster than headway speed.

The other fact that caught my attention was the licensing. I asked my friend what kind of credentials he needed to charter and captain the catamaran, to which he said, “In the BVIs, all you need is your 10-digit license.” And I asked, “What’s that?”. He smirked, “Your credit card”. As long as you can reach the counter and hand the charter company a credit card, they’ll give you keys to large boat for the week. Unlike anywhere else in the US or Europe, no license or sailing résumé needed. This general sense of lawlessness in the Virigin Islands strongly appealed to my live-free-or-die ethos.

In the evening, we moored in the bay in the middle of Norman Island near a floating bar called Willy T’s. I gazed up at the stars from the opened hatch above my sleeping berth. I had an unperturbed planetarium right above my bed. One thing I quickly noticed is that, in the Caribbean, the bright side of the moon is on the bottom of the moon, rather than the side, forming more of a smily-face shape. Apparently this is an effect near the equator. The phase of the moon is always the same no matter where on Earth you are, but the angle of the bright part changes based on latitude.

Day 3: Cooper Island and Virgin Gorda

Around lunchtime, we made a brief stopover at Cooper Island, which was a sleepy castaway island resort, with a couple outdoor bars surrounded by palm trees and white sand.

By early evening we docked the boat at a marina in Spanish Town, Virgin Gorda. We all took turns using the larger showers onshore in the marina. We learned quickly to take advantage of the amenities at the marinas, since the showers and bathrooms on the boat were quite tight even tho our boat had four showers and four bathrooms for twelve people.

We ate dinner at Little Dix Resort, which had beautifully manicured gardens and pools perched on the side of a steep mountain overlooking the clear blue ocean water. The food was quite good, but the scenery was even better.

We came back to the marina after dark only to realize that we had been locked out of the boat. The door had jammed when we locked it before dinner. Two hours later, some Germans staying on the boat next us helped us break into one of the cabin windows to finally unlock the door. Phew! Everyone was worried that we’d be sleeping outside that night.

Day 4: The Baths and Bitter End Yacht Club

The Baths are a series rock formations on the southern neck of Virgin Gorda. There is a loop that takes visitors thru a series of sandy and narrow grottos finally ending at a beautiful sandy beach surrounded by more rock formations. Only mistake we made was going the wrong way around the loop. We were going against traffic and the oncoming flow of Disney cruise tourists was relentless.

We sailed past the home of Richard Branson, the creator of Virgin Records, on Mosquito Island on the way to The Bitter End Yacht Club, which was our mooring site for the night. Bitter End looked like a nice resort. We walked around in the afternoon and then took the dingy to Saba Rock, adjacent to Bitter End, for drinks and dinner. We met a French family that we encountered a couple days prior. Many people sail the Virgin Islands in the same direction, so it is common to see familiar faces throughout the journey.

Day 5: Anegada Part I

Nearly all of the Virgin Islands are mountainous and have volcanic rock formations—all but one. Anegada was formed on top of a coral reef, which makes it flat. Its geography also makes it more prone to having large sandy beaches.

The sail to Anegada was one of the longer legs of the trip. It took several hours to travel from Bitter End to Anegada. This leg of the journey was the only one that we could not see the destination in the distance. Anegada does not have much prominence above the horizon. Only about 30 min away could we start to make out some palm trees floating just above the horizon.

After our arrival, we got off the boat and rented a pickup truck to get to the other side of the island. The bed of the pickup was outfitted with bench seats, so the entire boat crew was able to squeeze in.

In the distance on the other side of a swamp next to the road, we saw flamingos. For lunch we stopped at a restaurant at Loblolly Beach. This was one of the few times during the trip we encountered some rain showers. The rain hardly interrupted any plans and there also were some occasional downpours at night during the trip. We ended the day at Cow Wreck Beach, which had a nice bar with swings and a giant Jenga game.

Day 6: Anegada Part II

This was our official beach day on Anegada. There is an undeveloped beach on the south west shoreline, which is one of the most pristine beaches I’ve ever been on. We took kayaks from the boat and went ashore. Lots of photo taking ensued because if there weren’t pictures, did it really happen?

For dinner, we had Caribbean lobster at a local restaurant next to the water. Unlike New England lobster, the Caribbean variety do not have claws, but still were tasty. I survived picking apart my half-lobster dinner. I’ve never been a huge fan of dissecting my meal on my plate, even tho I realize this is a rite of passage with lobster.

Day 7: Scrub Island

Scrub Island was the nicest resort and marina that we stayed at during the voyage. Little Dix on Virgin Gorda was arguably fancier, but we only were there for dinner. Scrub Island had a number of nice pools, hot tubs, and bars where we could lounge and look at the beautiful island views across the channel. There was even a water slide that went into one of the lower pools. At night the pool and palm trees were beautifully illuminated with colorful lights.

Day 8: Jost van Dyke

Last but not least was Jost van Dyke. We technically stopped at Little Jost van Dyke first to hike to the Bubble Pool, which was a coral tidal pool that the ocean waves crashed into.

We then continued sailing another 30 minutes to the famous Soggy Dollar Bar, the original home of the painkiller cocktail. The primary ingredients in this drink were rum, pineapple juice, orange juice, and cream of cocoanut.

There was a webcam mounted on top of the bar and my parents were able to find me spot me while at home in snowy New Hampshire.

Day 9: Departure

We returned to the marina in Tortola and reversed the route we had made on arrival. The our taxi from the marina to the ferry terminal in Road Town arrived and the driver introduced himself. “Yeah man, my name is Shampoo,” he said. One of my friends from the boat quickly observed and quipped in French that Shampoo also had no hair. That gave me a good laugh.

At least on departure we were fully acclimated to island time, since getting out of the Virgin Islands was equally a circus as was the arrival. Of course there were all sorts of exit stamps and cash-only taxes, but this was the bittersweet end to a great vacation. 10/10 would highly recommend.

A year of blogging

Nantasket Beach, Hull, MA, drone shot
Drone shot of Nantasket Beach in Hull, MA, looking towards Boston in the distance

I bought the drewsview.xyz domain a year ago and the out reach of this page has exceeded my expectations. My Twitter page has grown at reasonable clip thanks in no small part to my #NHpolitics and liberty followers. My public Instagram and YouTube pages need more love, but they have generated positive impressions. I’d like to be more active on Odysee, which is a video site hosted on a blockchain, and is more impervious to censorship. I plan on flying high and keeping the adventure going into Summer 2022. I have some good trips in the works for June. Stay hungry.

New Hampshire travel guide and drone scenery

Excellent travel guide and drone scenery produced by Tampa Aerial Media in 2020. I’ll forgive them, since the drone scenes are excellent, but I want to note a couple corrections. US Rte 3 continues to the Québec border crossing in Pittsburg, NH —NOT Maine. The Memorial Bridge in Portsmouth, NH, rebuilt in 2013, is not the original bridge, which was built in 1923.

Drew’s day in Concord

Ever since I found out over a year ago that drones have been forbidden from New Hampshire state parks, I’ve made it a personal mission to find a way to get drones reinstated. If I can fly a drone in Tuckerman’s Ravine or any town park in New Hampshire, without a permit, why should I be forbidden from flying at Franconia Notch State Park? This is the argument I made before the state legislature in my visit to Concord two Wednesdays ago.

I had been corresponding with one of my state representatives, Keith Ammon of New Boston, for over 6 months on this issue. Keith did some initial investigation at my request and was constantly treated with radio silence by officials in the state parks division. I kept pushing and encouraged Keith to submit a bill mid-September 2021. The resulting legislative service request became House Bill 1292 (2022).

In October, I began rallying support from other drone users throughout the state primarily through Facebook groups, namely NH Drone Enthusiasts. Thru this networking, I had a lot of support from Marie Sapienza, who is a lawyer, former state representative, and drone photographer from Newton, NH. Her work is fantastic and she frequently posts on her Facebook page. I also had a lot of support from Forrest from Alpine Digital Media in Lincoln, NH.

Then came January. Time for the hearing for HB 1292. Most people involved with New Hampshire politics would argue that having an over-400-member legislature is a profound feature, not a flaw, of New Hampshire’s government. As a direct result, in non-covid times, nearly all bills get public hearings, which is not true of most government bodies in the United States. Another benefit of the large size of the legislature is the ability to access politicians. Most politicians in New Hampshire will respond to genuine emails, which is how I even got to this point with the bill.

Enter stage right. Capital cities usually attempt to be a showpiece for the political entity they represent. Concord, New Hampshire, is no exception. The elegant granite government buildings embody the rugged and self-reliant nature of New Hampshire’s frontier yankee culture, which persists despite being rather cosmopolitan. As an aside, I will point out that there are state capitals that need to up their game. Trenton, New Jersey, I’m looking at you. As they say, “The world makes and Trenton takes.” Albany, New York, isn’t really anything to call home about either, nor is Hartford, Connecticut.

The New Hampshire Legislative Office Building (LOB)

Center stage. All of the House committee hearings are held in the New Hampshire Legislative Office Building (LOB), located directly behind the New Hampshire State House. The LOB is a former federal courthouse and post office that was converted into state offices in the 1960s. Again, it’s one of the shining examples of New Hampshire granite architecture in Concord.

I walked into into the LOB and a security guard directed me up the stairs to the 3rd floor. I shuffled into the committee room during a hearing for some environmental bill that wasn’t very well attended. An elderly man wearing a mask dressed in flannel, who had just testified, glared grumpily at me as he proceeded back to his seat. I was wearing a business suit and an Old Man of the Mountain tie. How apropos?

The committee called Rep. Ammon to the stand, where he introduced the bill and alluded that I would be testifying. Within a couple minutes of Rep. Ammon’s testimony, the committee chair called the “expert”—me—to the stand. I gave my short speech and brought up many of the facts uncovered in me and Marie’s research.

Then came the questions. One of the most particular questions was in regards to privacy. What if people in state parks are captured in the drone footage they asked. I swiftly made the argument that people with iPhones have the right to film anywhere in public and people’s faces are much more in view from a close encounter with an iPhone rather than a drone far away in the sky.

Next up to the plate were the various administrators, all of whom testifying against the bill. Ha! None of them could really come up with compelling arguments against drones on public land. Drones are considerably quieter and safer than hunting or motor vehicles. Phil Bryce, the NH Parks and Recreation director, droned on and on with department mission statements. His testimony was taken right off the streets of Anatevka. “Tradition!” Phil kept saying. The famous song from “Fiddler on the Roof” came to mind. Drones apparently are not part of New Hampshire tradition and hunting is according to him. Never mind the fact that New Hampshire has a long tradition of embracing aerospace technology. In greater Nashua alone, Sanders Associates, and its many spinoffs, and Daniel Webster College were significant institutions in aerospace, and have long since had a profound impact on the modern economy of New Hampshire. The first American astronaut, Alan Shepard, was also a New Hampshire native.

Audio recording of the New Hampshire Parks Director and Division of Aeronautics Administrator testifying against the drone bill HB1292 (2022)

I spoke with several representatives after the session and I do come away with some hope there will be a law or rules that will be more amenable to flying drones while also getting rid of the outright ban.

While it’s likely true that many government organizations operate in quasi-secrecy, I give the New Hampshire General Court a lot of credit for spending many hours holding these public hearings to at least listen to constituents. Anyone can go speak at these events. The doors are wide open.

Another observation was the attitude of a few of the reps. I noticed one rep in the minority party basically had his back turned the whole time to the speakers at the podium. I thought it was pretty disrespectful. If his ridiculous mask were any indication, he’s probably a pretty weird dude.

Overall a decent day in Concord. I encourage more people to testify at these hearings. If only we could harness just a fraction people’s energy that goes into posting scornful content on social media towards being active participants in government, the world would be a far better place. I believe the success of the New Hampshire model is attributable to both the politically active culture of New Hampshire and the structure of its government, and thus should be put on a pedestal as a shining example for the rest of the world to see.